What is the best way to model the budget process described here in Planning?

I am attempting to model an organization's budget process using Planning task lists and the planning unit approval process. I have 3 questions:

1) The organization's budget process includes steps that do not involve reviewing/approving the budget; e.g., steps where they generate a report, update a form, communicate with another user, run a business rule, etc. For these steps, I plan to create tasks of the type that matches the purpose of the task; e.g., URL or Descriptive task type for generating the report, Business Rule type for running a BR, etc. Once the user completes this task, I would like Planning to send an email to the next user that must complete the next step in the budget process. I understand that